Feeling embarrassed can motivate people to want to save face—literally. A study published in the journal Psychological Science found people recalling embarrassing events tended to want to apply face creams that promise to restore skin. These people also were more likely to want to hide their face with large, dark sunglasses than people not feeling embarrassed.

In the study, researchers at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto explored symbolic ways people cope with embarrassment in experiments involving more than 200 Hong Kong students, about 21 years old. Two-thirds were women.

In the first experiment, 33 subjects wrote about an embarrassing experience and 18 wrote about a typical school day. Both groups then rated photos of men and women wearing various sunglasses, and indicated how likely they were to buy a pair. Participants who wrote about embarrassment were more likely to buy large, dark sunglasses than smaller, lighter models, compared with the other group.